The Civil War Context

The English Civil War is the background into which Quakerism emerges.

This is a tumultuous period in English social history and combined with harvest failures and food shortages, high levels of religious expectation and political vision, it has been described as a time when the ‘world was turned upside down’.

This step is about understanding the key issues and the timeline of events.

The Civil War heralds the culmination of hopes for a true and full religious reformation instead of the political one that Henry VIII had instituted in 1534. It is a struggle for democratic power over the dynastic divine right of the monarchy and of greater enfranchisement.

For some, the war and the upheaval signal that Christianity is reaching the culmination of the biblical timeline and that the events foretold in the book of Revelation are about to come true. Everything is up for discussion, negotiation, and revision or revolution.

Some of the first Quakers fought in the Civil War. George Fox travelled around England staying at the army camps where the most radical ideas were circulating and whilst he doesn’t mention it, his transforming experience happens in 1647 during the Civil War.

Quakerism later flourishes during the Republic led by Cromwell partly because of the lack of censorship and the degree of religious freedom offered the Quakers by the Puritan rulers.

Update Tues 4 October

Try and get a sense of the main debates and main events of the war and who was who.

*We would like to apologise for our error in including this resource from the BBC and for the frustration that it has caused some of you. We are aware that iPlayer isn’t available outside the UK but didn’t realise BBC Bitesize clips were also restricted.

Many of you have shared links to resources and we have listed some of these below: